Minor #18

Truth:
1. The first reproof to Israel was due to Israel's not being one with God and that Bethel had become a place for the worship of idols.
2. The second reproof to Israel was because they oppressed the poor, crushed the needy, and indulged themselves in pleasures.
3. The third reproof was the strongest of the three.  The leaders did not care for justice and righteousness and did not care for the people according to the law of God.  They hated him who reproved in the gate, the place where the leading ones exercised judgment, and they abhorred the one who spoke with integrity.  They took a forced gift from the poor.  Instead of making noise and singing songs, they should exercise justice and practice righteousness.
4. In the midst of such a situation, God has done something marvelous.  He came to be incarnated as a man, and He lived on earth to set up a model of how to have the divine life expressed in humanity, of how to have the divine attributes expressed in the human virtues.

Life experience/Application:

Minor #17

Truth:
1. The book of Amos also covers the chastisement of Israel and the punishment upon the nations to bring in the manifestation of Christ, issuing in the restoration, which consummates in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth.
2. Amos in Hebrew mans "burden bearer."
3. The subject of the book of Amos is Jehovah's judgments on Israel and the surrounding nations, with the issue of restoration.
4. Jehovah's judgment on Judah was due to their rejecting the law of Jehovah and not keeping His statues and due to their following their fathers to lie.

Life experience/Application:

Minor #16

Truth:
1. In our study of the Minor Prophets, we have emphasized four points: God's chastisement of Israel, God's punishment upon the nations, the manifestation of Christ, and the restoration of all things.
2. God's history is of two portions -- the history of God with man in the OT and the history of God in man in the NT.
3. Regarding the history of God in man, the incarnation of Christ accomplished two things.  First, the incarnation brought God into man.  Second, the incarnation made God one with man.  As a result of the incarnation, there was a wonderful person -- a person who is the mingling of God with man.

4. The NJ is a marvelous sign demonstrating how God is in man and is one with man.

Life experience/Application:
1. God wants to come into man and to be one with man.  Man, however, does not take God's way but insists on his own way.  This insistence has caused, and continues to cause, great failure.

2. God created us with the intention to gain us so that He could come into us and be one with us.  However, either we do not care for God or we care for God according to our own way.

Minor #15

Truth:
1. It was through the consuming locusts and the suffering Israel that God could fulfill His economy to have an expression.
2. The church is part of the divine history, the intrinsic history of the divine mystery within the outward, human history.

Life experience/Application:
1. If we would know the divine history that takes place within the human history, we first need to realize that the Triune God is eternal.
2. If our living is in the world, we are living in the human history. But if we are living in the church, we are living in the divine history. In the church life, God's history is our history.

Minor #14

Truth:
1. The consuming factor involving the nations in 4 stages and the suffering factor involving Israel have been present for a major part of human history.
2. God's purpose in allowing Israel to suffer under the locusts was to bring forth a couple, Mary and Joseph, so that God could be born in man, of man, and out of man to become no longer only God but a God-man.  The suffering factor was the factor to consummate the divine incarnation; the suffering of the Jews was the factor to produce the incarnation.

Life experience/Application:

1. In a very real sense, all the locusts are working for us.  The millions of locusts swarming on earth today are serving us so that we may be here for the manifestation of Christ.

Minor #13

Truth:
1. The four kinds of locusts denote the four sections of the entire human government on earth signified by the great human image in Daniel 2.
2.

Life experience/Application:
1. Today three things are taking place on earth: the consuming by the Roman locusts, the suffering of Israel, and the manifestation of Christ.  We are joined to the manifestation of Christ.  The line of the manifestation of Christ will eventually bring us into the fuller manifestation of Christ in the age of restoration.
2. We need to see that today we, the believers in Christ, are in the Body of Christ.  Our goal is to enlarge the manifestation of Christ intrinsically.

Minor #12

Truth:
1. Israel lost both the ground and the materials to offer the meal offering to feed God and the drink offering to cheer God.
2. The pouring out of the Spirit was fulfilled as a foretaste on the day of Pentecost and as a full taste before the great tribulation for the salvation and regeneration of many of the returned Israelites.
3. Christ came through incarnation.  Eventually, He died and was resurrected, and, in a sense, He went away.  But by the outpouring of the Spirit He came back to be manifested.
4. There are 3 outpourings of the Holy Spirit: first, the outpouring on the day of Pentecost; second, the outpouring before the great tribulation upon the Jews; and third, the outpouring upon the besieged Jews, who will have no way to escape the persecution of Antichrist. 
5. Joel 3:19-21a tells us that the nations will be punished, Israel will be restored, and Christ will be manifested.

Minor #11

Truth:
1. The book of Joel contains 3 main points.  First, it is the plague of 4 kinds of locusts.  Second, it is the outpouring of the consummated Spirit.  Third, it is the restoration not only of Israel but of the entire universe.

2. The nation is likened to one of locust in 4 stages, the great human image in four sections, the four beasts (lion, bear, leopard, and one who is the totality of the first three), and 4 horns.
3. The Bible covers 4 things: God's chastisement on His elect people, God's punishment of the nations, the manifestation of Christ, and the restoration.
4. The Spirit is the consummated Christ for the manifestation of Christ.

Minor #10

Truth:
1. Joel means Jehovah is God.











2. The stone in Daniel 2 signifies not merely the individual Christ but also the corporate Christ.  The corporate Christ will come as a stone cut without hands and will smite the human government into pieces.
3. At the end of the great tribulation, the political Babylon the Great, the revived Roman Empire, will be destroyed by the Lord.
4. Al the judgments of the day of the Lord, including all the calamities, plagues, and woes, have a goal, and this goal is to bring gin the manifestation of Christ.

Minor #9

Truth:
1. Apart from Christ we cannot be sons of God.  Our sonship is altogether in Christ, by Christ, and with Christ.
2. In addition to His being the unique, only begotten Son of God from eternity, Christ, after incarnation and through resurrection, was begotten of God in His humanity and through resurrection, was begotten of God in His humanity to become the Son of God in another sense, in the sense of being the firstborn Son of God.
3. The cords in the cords of a man have different segments, each involves Christ's humanity in His incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension.
4. The love of God, the divine love, comes to us through Christ's humanity.


Life experience/Application:
1. God's everlasting love, His unchanging, subduing love, is altogether in Christ, with Christ, by Christ, and for Christ.  Apart from Christ, God's everlasting love could not be prevailing.  God's unchanging love is prevailing because it is a love in Christ, by Christ, and for Christ.
2. Sometimes we may want to eat too much or eat in hast, but God wants us to eat slowly and gently with patience and endurance.

Minor #8

Truth:
1. God used Hosea's marriage to Gomer and his family to demonstrate how Israel as a wife to Jehovah had become unfaithful to her Husband.
2. God's everlasting love is not a love in affection, like the love of a husband toward a wife, but a love in life, like the love of a father toward a son.
3. God loves us with His divine love, not on the level of His divinity but on the level of His humanity.  He has come down to the human level in order to reach us.
4. The yoke in Hosea 11:4 is Pharoh's yoke and eating was the eating of manna in the wilderness.
5. God's love for Israel is everlasting, and He will never repent of this love.
6. God will love Israel freely, for His anger will have turned away from them. 

Life experience/Application:
1. Love in affection does not transform, but love in life transforms people.  A husband who loves his wife in affection may spoil her, but a father who loves his son in life never spoils his son.
2.

Minor #7

Truth:

Life experience/Application:
1. A wife may be very good in every respect, but if she is not chaste, she is still not a proper wife.
2. If we all, the young ones and the old ones, prophesy one by one, how rich, how high, how fresh, how living, and how powerful that would be!

Minor #6

Truth:
1. Israel worshipped idols in the place where they earned their living.
2. Israel considered a man of the spirit, or an inspired one, as mad.  This indicates that they did not care for God's interests.
3. Israel had committed two evils: forsaking Jehovah and turning to idols.

Life experience/Application:
1. The fruit of the vine should have been offered to God as a drink offering, but they used the vines to bring forth fruit for themselves, not for God.
2. When the church is proper, the church has the headship, the leadership, representing God as His authority.
3. To seek Jehovah rightly is to sow rightly.  thus, Hosea charged the children of Israel to sow unto righteousness.  If they did this, they would reap according to lovingkindness.
4. Fallow ground is ground that has been plowed but has not been sown with anything.  The children of Israel were the fallow ground.  They had been plowed by God, but had not been sown with righteousness.

Minor #5

Truth:

Life experience/Application:
1. Human beings may not be capable of understanding the Bible or of knowing God, but they are very capable in making many things their idols.

Minor #4

Truth:
1. Hosea 4-6 covers the sins of the apostate people, the punishment of Jehovah, and the return of the apostate people.
2. The two days in Hosea 6:2 might signify the first 2 periods of a thousand years each, counting from A.D. 70, when the Roman prince Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, cruelly killed thousands of Jews, and scattered the Jews among the nations.
3. The third day in 6:2 might signify the third period of a thousand years, that is, the millennium, the age of restoration, in the reality of Christ's resurrection.
4. From the time Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded Israel in 606 B.C., three things have been taking place on earth.  The first is God's loving chastisement over His dear elect Israel, and the second is God's punishment on all the nations.  These two things bring in the third thing -- the manifestation of Christ, which will bring in a fourth thing, the age of restoration.
5. Christ's goings forth are His coming.

Life experience/Application:
1. Christ's goings forth, His coming, have not ceased.  Even today He is still coming.

Minor #3

Truth:
1. God's divorcing Israel was based upon His strong determination to receive her back again.







2. Even though God will hedge Israel up and build up a wall against her, blocking her way, she will not return to Him but instead will pursue her lovers, her idols.
3. Jehovah will lure Israel, He will bring her into the wilderness, and He will speak to her heart.
4. The restoration will be a result of the manifestation of Christ.









Life experience/Application:
1. All of us have had this kind of experience.  First, we struggled persistently against God to a point, but later we returned to God to be with Him.  We said, "I will return to God, for it was better then than now."
2. God does such negative things in order to correct us, to adjust us, to perfect us, and to make us according to His intention.
3. Quite often in our human life we enter into a situation which may be likened to a wilderness.  Sometimes God will cause our environment to be a wilderness so that He may speak to us, to our heart.

Minor #2

Truth: 1. Joshua means salvation. Jehovah is salvation. 2. Adulterous refers to Israel's condition and apostate refers to Israel's position. As to their condition, they were adulterous; as to their position, they were apostate. 3. This book reveals that in spite of Israel's adulterous condition and apostate position, Jehovah is willing to be salvation to her. 4. God loves Israel with an everlasting love. He is also a God of purity and righteousness. Life experience/Application: 1. How adulterous Israel is as the wife to Jehovah and how apostate Israel is as the people to Him, He still desires that she would return to Him. If she would return to Him, He would still receive her, bring her back, and restore her. 2. Grace follows sin. Where sin abounds, grace superabounds. 3. We should not indulge ourselves just because God is loving. We must be in fear and trembling as we enjoy His love. 4. On the one hand, His dealing with us is a matter of His chastisement; on the other hand, it is a matter of His love.

Minor #1

Truth: 1. Christ died, was buried, and was resurrected to spread God's redemption and salvation to the far away Gentiles. 2. Many things concerning Christ: His eternity, His incarnation in time, His death, burial, and resurrection for the spreading of God's redemption and salvation to all the nations on earth, His coming as the Desire of nations and as the Sun of righteousness, and His being the One dwelling on Mount Zion to be a shelter and a stronghold to God's elect. Life experience/Application: 1. The entire world is under Christ as the "General Manager." He is not only the Lord but also the Manager, managing the entire world situation. 2. Are you prepared to meet your God? 3. God pardons our iniquity and passes over our transgression. 4. God wants to have an organic union with His chosen people. His desire is to be united with His chosen people to be a universal couple.

Psa Msg 10

Truth:
1. The Psalms are fully Christ-centered. Christ is not only the centrality but also the universality of the Psalms.
2. The first 21 verses of Psa. 22 cover the death of Christ, the crucifixion of Christ, and the last 10 verses cover His resurrection.
3. His death is for redeeming, and His resurrection is for producing the church.
4. On the one hand, it was man crucifying the Lord Jesus, killing Him, but eventually it was God who Him to death.
5. The disciples became God's sons in Christ's resurrection.
6. Through His resurrection, we were regenerated.
7. "My brothers" became the church, the assembly. The Lord's brothers constitute the church.
8. The church is the reality of the kingdom and a precursor of the manifestation of the kingdom.

Life experience/Application:
1. If you are weak or down, you can read one psalm a number of times with some amount of prayer. Then you will be nourished. Every psalm can be a spiritual supply to us.
2. God surely hears our prayers, but many times He does not answer our prayers which are not according to His desire, His economy, His plan.